Conventional smoke detectors are helpful in alerting people to fire danger and thus saving lives and property. Smoke detectors are generally categorized or described as devices that improve safety for subjects such as humans, animals and equipment by detecting hazardous conditions that are unsafe to the subject and that also improve safety by providing an alert of the condition.
One function of conventional smoke detectors is detecting a weak battery source, or other weak power source. Commonly, smoke detectors emit an intermittent high-pitched beep to alert humans to the unreliability of the smoke detector and the need to replace the batteries. Alerting humans to the low battery may provide only the most primitive of status reporting and indication. Most unfortunately, the beeping can be performed only while sufficient power remains in the battery. At some point in time, as the battery power continues to weaken, without refreshed batteries, or connection to an A/C power source, the smoke detector will not receive sufficient power from the batteries
In some instances, the operation of a particular smoke detector can be either detrimental to the smoke detector itself or to the facility in which the smoke detector is located. For example, a smoke detector itself might cause a fire in the facility when the electronics in the smoke detector malfunction. However, conventional systems are largely ineffective at preventing such a problem.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art to discover and report fault(s) or failure of the smoke detectors when most needed. There is also a need in the art to reduce the possibility that smoke detectors will damage the system of which the smoke detector is a part. There is also a need in the art for smoke detectors that can be functionally extracted from an environment upon the occurrence of a predetermined condition.